Washington’s Fourth Interest

WASHINGTON’S FOURTH INTEREST Lars Schoultz When will the United States end its embargo and re-establish normal relations with Cuba? That question has been asked repeatedly since the end of the Cold War two decades ago, and the answer has always been the same: the estrangement will end when Cuba no longer threatens U.S. interests, which have traditionally been limited to three: security, economic trade, and US domestic politics. Until the end of the Cold War, security was the most important of these threatened interests. Small Caribbean nations are rarely considered a security concern, of course, but their physical proximity has always been worrisome – if a rival power were to establish a military base in the Caribbean, it could be used to launch an attack on the United States. It is therefore hardly surprising that the first statement of U.S. policy toward Latin America, the 1811 No-Transfer Resolution, was aimed at stopping the British from securing a toehold in Spanish Florida, and that the 1823 Monroe Doctrine was based on the same bedrock principle: prudent people keep powerful potential adversaries as far away as possible. Fast-forward to 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev warned the West that “we will bury you,” a boast that came just as Cuba’s revolutionary leaders were planning their campaign to seize power.1 Then in early 1960, a year after the rebels’ victory, Khrushchev sent the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, Anastas Mikoyan, to open a scientific , cultural and technical exhibition in Havana. Before leaving the island, Mikoyan signed agreements that included a program of development assistance and a commitment to purchase about twenty percent of Cuba’s sugar crop for each of the next five years. This confirmed Washington’s worst fears and prompted President Eisenhower to authorize preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The nation’s security required the overthrow of Cuba’s Soviet-friendly government. The Cuban revolution also attacked substantial economic interests. The U.S. government lost some of its own property, principally the Nicaro nickel facility which had been built by the U.S. General Services Administration during World War II and remained U.S. government-owned but operated by a private contractor. The contractor, Freeport Sulphur Company , also had been developing is own nickel and cobalt mine at Moa Bay, forty miles to the east. Freeport Sulphur lost both the contract and the mine, and other U.S. investors suffered losses valued at almost $2 billion back in the days when a billion was more than pocket change. About six thousand of those investors filed claims with the Foreign Claims Settlement C  2009 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 141 The Latin Americanist, September 2009 Commission, and some were extremely well-connected corporate leaders such as Robert Kleberg, the president of King Ranch in Texas, which lost its 40,000-acre ranch in Cienfuegos. With the help of Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, Kleberg was ushered into the Oval Office, where he asked President Eisenhower for help and got it – a full-court press by U.S. diplomats. It proved to be completely unsuccessful. Most investors of Robert Kleberg’s generation wrote off their losses decades ago, however, and in the post-Cold War era they have been replaced in the policy arena by powerful economic interests urging the United States to re-open trade with the island. Most powerful are the nation ’s farmers, who in 2000 pushed through a law that permits the sale of food to Cuba, albeit under conditions many consider onerous. At first Cuba declined to buy, insisting on normal two-way trade, but then reconsidered after a devastating hurricane in 2001, and the year ended with a boatload of U.S. poultry sailing into Havana’s harbor. It was the first significant trade with Cuba since 1963. Cubans apparently liked what they bought, and soon the invisible hand of supply and demand began to work its magic. In early 2002 six House Democrats visited the island, including Arkansas moderate Vic Snyder, touting the rice and pork produced by his constituents. Then came a delegation of Californian producers...